Audio links of Bishop Perry and Fr. Mankowski, S.J.

From the Capstone Pilgrimage to Chicago, 2013...

Capstone students with Bishop Perry at St. John Cantius.

Click on the links below to hear and download the two major talks the students heard while in Chicago.  Also, the link at the bottom allows you to contribute to the travel and other expenses of the Senior Capstone Seminar - your generosity is appreciated.

• His Excellency, Bishop Joseph Perry of the Archdiocese of Chicago
• Fr. Paul Mankowski, S.J. of Loyola University, Chicago

Like what you see and hear about Capstone and Saint Agnes School?  Support the Senior Capstone Seminar (noting "Senior Capstone Seminar" in your entry).

Stand up for religious freedom rally (St. Paul, MN)

Shocking: Cardinal George's "What are you giving up for Lent?"

This article by his imminence, Francis Cardinal George, Archbishop of Chicago bluntly states the predicament of the Catholic Church in America under the current regime.

We were blessed to meet with Cardinal George in December and he did not mince his words then either.

Ad multos annos!

Here's a snippet of the Cardinal's recent article:

The Lenten rules about fasting from food and abstaining from meat have been considerably reduced in the last forty years, but reminders of them remain in the fast days on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday and in the abstinence from meat on all the Fridays of Lent. Beyond these common sacrifices that unite us spiritually to the passion of Christ, Catholics were and are encouraged to “give up” something voluntarily for the sake of others. Often this is money that could have been used for personal purposes and instead is given to help others, especially the poor.

This year, the Catholic Church in the United States is being told she must “give up” her health care institutions, her universities and many of her social service organizations. This is not a voluntary sacrifice. It is the consequence of the already much discussed Department of Health and Human Services regulations now filed and promulgated for implementation beginning Aug. 1 of this year.

Why does a governmental administrative decision now mean the end of institutions that have been built up over several generations from small donations, often from immigrants, and through the services of religious women and men and others who wanted to be part of the church’s mission in healing and education? Catholic hospitals, universities and social services have an institutional conscience, a conscience shaped by Catholic moral and social teaching. The HHS regulations now before our society will make it impossible for Catholic institutions to follow their conscience.

So far in American history, our government has respected the freedom of individual conscience and of institutional integrity for all the many religious groups that shape our society. The government has not compelled them to perform or pay for what their faith tells them is immoral. That’s what we’ve meant by freedom of religion. That’s what we had believed was protected by the U.S. Constitution. Maybe we were foolish to believe so.

Read the entire article here.

Fr. Barron on atheist Christopher Hitchens

We've asked the students to watch this and think about it; a great example of modern apologetics.

UPDATE: A Solid Rebuttle to the YouTube phenom: "Why I Hate Religion, but Love Jesus"

This new video was produced by a priest in response to "Why I Love Jesus, and Hate Religion". Not bad!


You may have heard of this YouTube video "Why I hate Religion, but love Jesus" making the rounds, dear students.

The video raises some interesting questions and gets a number of important issues right,

but many of the statements are highly problematic (e.g. the main premise that religion is contrary to Jesus) by way of shallow rhetoric. The theology and Scriptural references are easy enough to parse.

I would suggest that this fellow's view of religion is not simply one we can ignore; this is because there are many, many Christians (even Catholics) who share his view in America and the modern west. We cannot afford simply to mock it - it needs to be engaged and thoroughly rebutted. This is one of the aims of our Capstone Seminar: to give you the tools to articulate truth in the face of skepticism, shallow fads, ideology and hatred in an unbiased manner. Likewise, if you cannot admit that some of the things he (and other people who are 1/2 correct) says are spot-on, we've failed too.

Also, the young man is obviously coming from a shallow, non-denominational protestant perspective, so many of the statements he makes (that are obviously wrong to Catholics) are simply the logical consequence of the failed teachings and pragmatism of main-line protestant religion. We as Catholics can learn from these mistakes.

With that, I offer you a solid rebuttal from "Bad Catholic".

It’s worth beginning with this: I agree with this guy on a lot of points. He reminds us Catholics of a striking truth; that without a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, religion is a joke. He speaks the truth that Christ died for our sins, once and for all. I can’t help but think, in the midst of all this, that this hating-religion-loving-Jesus thing is the logical consequence of Protestantism. For a 21st-century Protestant looking at a thousand-something churches, I imagine there is an immense temptation to say “It’s all a wash. I will follow Christ, not a religion,” and be done with it. I empathize with him, knowing that if I were a Protestant I would be in full agreement: There is either one, true religion or there is no religion at all.

But nevertheless, there are two main problems with this video. 1. Jesus Christ would strongly disagree with it. That is to say, the creator of this video is very, very wrong. 2. He’s very, very wrong with some great video editing, good background music, a strong emotional appeal, catchy rhyme, and all in relatively well-timed YouTube moment. He’s wrong in style. When a man gains immense popularity by making blanket statements stylistically, how likely is it that his followers will read a rebuttal making specific statements prosaically? I don’t know, but rebut I must, for it is the duty of the Catholic to resist fashion and fads, no matter how unfashionable he looks doing it.

Read "Bad Catholic's" entire roast here.

Another related post by "Bad Catholic" here. Whoever the author of "Bad Catholic" is, he's pretty dang clever! Enjoy.